Jack-O-Lanterns

We carved jack-O-Lanterns tonight. Molly designed her own, Clara requested several things: "C" "Eyes" "Nose" "Mouth". Molly asked me to include ears, too. And then decided to actually spell Clara's name with the face parts. We had fun with the Full Belly Farm pumpkins!

nana's bananas

clara and nana have breakfast in LA (sorry about the lo-res, taken with my cellphone)

Fancy Family

From LA-October 2009

We're back from LA - it was a remarkable trip. We *did* dress up really fancy and celebrate Henry's 90th birthday! And the girls were absolutely incredible. Not only did they look lovely, but they were lovely and I think even had a good time.
Photos and stories to follow...

transitions

It's been a really big week for our family. Most notably, we turned 2. Well, technically Clara turned 2, but really we all did. This is the second anniversary of Molly being a big sister, and of us being a family of 4. In other transitions, we said goodbye to Clara's amazing daycare, and hello to having two kids at Via Nova. That transition has been harder than expected, in part because the daycare was really that amazing, and in part because Clara's just a bit young for this transition. It's clearly the best thing for our family, but in a perfect world it would have been nice to wait a few more months.

Clara's first day was fine. Apparently she didn't want to come home when Zach picked the girls up at the end of the day. You never would have guessed that in the morning when she threw herself on the ground screaming "No!" and "I want Kika!" when we told her we were going to Via Nova.

Lucky for all of us, Nona has also been visiting and supporting us through this transition.

Happy 2nd Birthday Clara!

Happy Birthday Clara! What a birthday it was. You celebrated in style, over and over again. Kika had real Apple Pie for you at daycare*, then your grandparents showed up for an exciting birthday dinner, with more pie, ice cream and singing. On Friday you had your first full day at Via Nova. And on Saturday we gathered your buddies to celebrate again in the park. Phew! No wonder you're exhausted! I'm exhausted too.

But even with all the excitement, you were as funny and charming as ever. You've developed a really funny side and love being silly and goofing off with everyone. You've also moved from "me-too" to a very stubborn "I DO IT!" Much to my surprise, this has included potty training. For about two months now you've been really interested in the potty, but I've been very reluctant to indulge you, dreading the accidents ahead. A few weeks ago, though, Akiva kindly took on your potty training and you were pretty much done in a day. It took a little bribery (jelly beans) to convince you to use the potty consistently (sometimes it's just more fun to keep playing), and now you pretty much only have accidents when we do things like have non-stop birthday party celebrations. (imagine that!).

You're also enjoying testing the limits of defying our requests and warnings. Information like "that's hot!" result in you immediately wanting to touch the hot thing. Requests like "that cup of milk has to stay in the kitchen" results in you inching your way to the kitchen door while looking back over your shoulder with a sly grin on your face.

And, of course, you adore your sister and want to emulate pretty much everything she does. Lucky you, she doesn't take too much advantage of that situation, yet.

Happy Birthday baby Clara. I can't wait to see what's in store this next year!





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* In the last few months the kids at Kika's House (but mostly Clara) have become a tad obsessed with "apple pie". They "make" apple pie in all their pretend cooking, and most of their pretend water and sand play. So you can imagine how exciting it was for all of them to see some *real* apple pie!

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6 years!

Happy Anniversary to us!

Sunflower

One of our sunflowers made it! These are pictures from about a month ago when it fully bloomed. Molly & Zach cut it and brought it in our kitchen to savor the beauty of it (and because it was about to get knocked over out front like the other two that almost made it).

Hoes Down

We went to the Full Belly Farm Hoes Down this weekend. It was lovely.

We have, at times, been subscribers to their CSA, and had heard the Hoes Down is a great family celebration. In fact, two years ago our midwife tried to convince us to go with her (since she couldn't, in good conscience, leave her 9-month pregnant client over two hours away and without cell phone contact). We couldn't go that year because of Zach's Solarthon (and me being 9 months pregnant). But we went this year and met up with Rylyn & family. And it was lots of fun.

Strawberries

Clara loves her berries. Here she is plowing through a basket of berries. Yes, she's eating on the floor. I was making dinner and turned around to find that she had gotten into the fridge (had I let it close too slowly? had Molly helped her? had she done it herself!?), pulled out the strawberries, and chomped each one. Note the neat row of berries - each with exactly one Clara-sized bite out of it. I guess it's good that she's not asking me to take the leaves off of each one?